Tech-Savvy Suites: How Hotels are Making Headway into the Future

The current trend of voice-control technology has inflicted immense change on the real estate industry, creating another set of expectations for high-end homes or spaces to exceed.

This trend has found a new home in hotel rooms and is enhancing the way resorts cater to the needs of guests.

Wynn Las Vegas and Amazon recently announced plans to equip all 4,748 hotel rooms at Wynn Las Vegas with Echo, Amazon’s hands-free voice-controlled speaker. The introduction of this technology into every guest room, beginning this month with installation in suites, will be an industry-first in the world, allowing every guest of Wynn Las Vegas to control various hotel room features with a series of voice commands via Alexa, the brain behind Echo.

“As we have moved through the years, technology has always played an important part in our resorts,” says Steve Wynn, chairman and CEO of Wynn Resorts. “The thing that Amazon has done with Alexa is quite perfect. If I have ever seen anything in my 49 years of developing resorts that has made our job of delivering a perfect experience to our guests easier and help us get to another level, it is Alexa.

“The ability to talk to your room is effortlessly convenient. In partnership with Amazon, becoming the first resort in the world in which guests can verbally control every aspect of lighting, temperature and the audio-visual components of a hotel room is yet another example of our leadership in the world of technology for the benefit of all of our guests,” says Wynn.

Alexa will be fully operational in all guest rooms by summer 2017, and will initially control guest room lights, room temperature, drapery and the television. As the project evolves, future features such as personal assistant functions will be introduced.

“Millions of people already enjoy interacting with Alexa at home via their Echo devices, and now they will be able to experience the same convenience while traveling,” says Steve Rabuchin, vice president of Amazon Alexa. “Wynn Las Vegas is known for its comfort and luxury, and we are excited to work with the resort to enhance its guest experience with Alexa.”

Alexa is a the brain behind Amazon Echo and other Alexa-enabled devices — just ask and she’ll answer questions, read the news, set timers and alarms, recite calendars, check sports scores, control smart devices in-home, and more. Since Alexa runs in the cloud, she is always getting smarter — plus it is simple and free for developers to build Alexa skills and integrate Alexa into their own products. In the U.S., there are already more than 6,000 skills available for Alexa.

Wynn Las Vegas was not the first hotel to install voice-control technology in their hotel rooms, however. In August 2016 Aloft Hotels implemented the “Project Jetson” initiative in several of their hotel locations, which moved to enable control temperature, light and other room settings. Guests could control these settings through a custom Aloft app on iPads included in their rooms.

With people’s increasing desire to have control over their experiences, who knows where advances in technology will lead resort owners in the future.